Naval Base Simonstown is the

South African Navy The South African Navy (SA Navy) is the naval warfare branch of the South African National Defence Force. The Navy is primarily engaged in maintaining a conventional military deterrent, participating in counter-piracy operations, fishery prote ...

's largest

naval base A naval base, navy base, or military port is a military base, where warships and naval ships are docked when they have no mission at sea or need to restock. Ships may also undergo repairs. Some naval bases are temporary homes to aircraft that usu ...

, situated in the

City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality The City of Cape Town (; ) is a metropolitan municipality that forms the local government of Cape Town and surrounding areas. As of 2022 it has a population of 4,772,846. History Cape Town first received local self-government in 1839, wit ...

Western Cape The Western Cape ( ; , ) is a provinces of South Africa, province of South Africa, situated on the south-western coast of the country. It is the List of South African provinces by area, fourth largest of the nine provinces with an area of , an ...

. The base provides support functions to

Fleet Command ''Fleet Command'', previously labelled as ''Jane's Fleet Command'', is a real-time tactics naval warfare simulation computer game released in May 1999. It was developed by Sonalysts Inc. and published by Electronic Arts (EA). The game licensed ...

History

A small

dockyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Compared to shipyards, which are sometimes more involve ...

facility was first established in Simon's Town by the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( ; VOC ), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered company, chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States Ge ...

in 1743. This was taken over by the British

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

(RN) in the 1790s, under whom the facility was further developed over the following century and a half. A pair of handsome stone storehouses dating from the 1740s stand on the seafront where they were built by the Dutch East India Company, marking the initial location of the Yard. Immediately adjacent is the earliest Royal Naval building on the site: a combined mast-house, boathouse and sail loft; dating from 1815, it now serves as the South African Naval Museum. Over the next few decades, the site was developed gradually, with steam engineering and coaling facilities being added mid-century. In 1885, the government of the

Cape Colony The Cape Colony (), also known as the Cape of Good Hope, was a British Empire, British colony in present-day South Africa named after the Cape of Good Hope. It existed from 1795 to 1802, and again from 1806 to 1910, when it united with three ...

transferred the assets of the Simon's Bay Dock and Patent Slip Company to the

British Admiralty The Admiralty was a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the Government of the United Kingdom that was responsible for the command of the Royal Navy. Historically, its titular head was the Lord High Admiral of the ...

. By the close of the century, however, it became clear that more space would be needed to accommodate the requirements of a modern Navy. In 1898, a large site was acquired to the east of the original Yard for a dockyard extension. Sir John Jackson and Co Ltd. were chosen to do the work. Construction began in 1900. The new harbour encompassed an area of 11 hectares, with a

breakwater Breakwater may refer to: * Breakwater (structure), a structure for protecting a beach or harbour Places * Breakwater, Victoria, a suburb of Geelong, Victoria, Australia * Breakwater Island, Antarctica * Breakwater Islands, Nunavut, Canada * ...

of in length. It also contained a

drydock A dry dock (sometimes drydock or dry-dock) is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, ...

long and wide, with a sizeable steam factory constructed alongside. The drydock was named the Selborne Graving Dock after the Earl of Selborne, the High Commissioner of the Cape. Work on the Simon's Town dockyard was completed in 1910. The naval base was handed over to South Africa in 1957 under the

Simonstown Agreement The Simonstown Agreement was a naval cooperation agreement between the United Kingdom and South Africa, signed on 30 June 1955. Under the agreement, the Royal Navy (RN) gave up its naval base at Simon's Town, South Africa, and transferred com ...

. The Dockyard was expanded in 1975, a large area of land was reclaimed and the harbour walls were extended to form a new Tidal Basin. In December 2022 ''Lady R'', a

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n cargo ship, docked at Simon's Town Naval Base. It was alleged by the United States ambassador to South Africa that South African military supplies were loaded onto the ship for use in

Russia's invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

. This situation became known as the

Lady R incident The ''Lady R'' incident, also known as #LadyRussiagate, refers to the docking of the International sanctions during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, sanctioned Russian cargo ship ''Lady R'' at Naval Base Simon's Town, Simon's Town Naval B ...

. It has been reported the Ukrainian GUR discovered what was going on and passed the information to the United States.

Current status

, it is the main base of the South African Navy, and home port of the frigate and submarine

flotilla A flotilla (from Spanish, meaning a small ''flota'' ( fleet) of ships), or naval flotilla, is a formation of small warships that may be part of a larger fleet. Composition A flotilla is usually composed of a homogeneous group of the same cla ...

s. The base also houses training facilities for the frigates and submarines. In December 2015,

Naval Base Durban Naval Base Durban in Durban harbour is a naval base of the South African Navy, situated on Salisbury Island, which is now joined to the mainland through land reclamation. It was formerly a full naval base until it was downgraded to a naval st ...

Durban harbour The Port of Durban, commonly called Durban Harbour, is the largest and busiest shipping terminal in sub-Saharan Africa. It handles up to 31.4 million tons of cargo each year. It is the fourth largest container terminal in the Southern Hemisph ...

was redesignated back to a fully fledged naval base and home port of the offshore patrol flotilla. City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality

Gallery

File:F220 Hamburg - 2008.JPG, Naval Base Simon's Town from the sea. File:View of SAS Simonsberg, Simon's Town.jpg, Site of the 18th-century dockyard. File:SA Naval Museum 2014.JPG, Mast House & Sail Loft, West Yard, 1815. File:Buildings next to Drydock, Simon's Town Navy Base.jpg, Main Factory, East Yard, completed 1910. File:SA Naval Museum, West Dockyard 3.JPG, Selborne Graving dock in use, 2013. File:South African naval tugs welcoming a new member.jpg, South African naval tugs welcoming a new tug in 2016.

References

{{Royal Navy shore establishments Installations of the South African Navy Cape Town 1743 establishments